Radio 4

Gotham! (2002)

Scott Heisel

Dammit.

Dammit dammit dammit.

I wanted this album to be insanely great. I wanted it to make "The New Song and Dance" look pathetic. I wanted it to take the ideas shown on the "Dance To The Underground" EP and expand on them even further. Instead, what do I get? A band that believes too much of their hype and doesn't try hard enough in the substance department.

This band seems to be all the rage in the New York club scene. Their last EP got spun in all the hippest NYC dance clubs, allowing scenesters to bump and grind. I'll be honest - Radio 4 has some infectious beats. But this totally went to their heads. Instead of expanding on their sound present on their previous work [basically a conglomeration of Wire/Gang of Four, and early U2], they fall into the "we're so cool, look at us" rut.

The album starts off promisingly enough - the one-two punch of "Our Town" and "Start A Fire" gets my ass shaking and my head bobbing. Heck, even the next few songs are good, dancable, politically-oriented rockers. If there's one thing this band can do, it's write some catchy as hell guitar and bass licks. The band's rhythm section has also gained an auxilliary percussionist which allows for more flamboyant drum beats. There's also some keyboards present in a lot of the tracks, and they're very tastefully done.

So what is my big problem with this release? It just all gets boring. The album's 13 tracks tend to really blend together after a while. The band's formula is pretty simple:

  • Get a catchy bass line with a driving drum part.
  • Add in a high pitched, reverby guitar part sporadically over the beat.
  • Play the same beat for the entire damn song.
    Lyrically, the band doesn't fare much better. Radio 4 seems to spew forth a whole bunch of political rhetoric, but none of it sounds new. It's all so vague, too: "Get behind the struggle / Won't you get behind the struggle," "I'm really sorry but we've got to start resisting / it's no request, we really are insisting"… You get the picture. The majority of the album sounds very garage band in nature, meaning everything sounds tinny and distorted and not evenly mixed. You can barely make out the words anyways, not that you'd really want to. It's my thought that a band whose songs seem to focus on political issues should print their lyrics in the CD booklet. Radio 4 doesn't, so why should I care what obtuse, generalized phrase they're chanting?

    If I sound mean and spiteful, it's because I am. I know this band can be better than this. There are some really killer songs on here [Download the 2 MP3s below, and go track down "Calling All Enthusiasts" and the wicked closer "New Disco"], but overall it just runs out of steam about 15 minutes into the album. Guys, quit trying to sound like the Faint without synthesizers - you were much better off ripping off the Gang of Four.

    MP3s
    Our Town
    Start A Fire